CHAPTER 17

Kind Words. Bad News

“HABA?”

Cool fingers and Adzriel’s scent brought Seregil close to the surface of waking again. He dreamed of her face, sometimes smiling and kind as she almost always had been, during the years she’d raised him. But in other dreams he was a child again, standing before the judges at Sarikali with blood on his tunic, and she was weeping.

And always that pet name—Haba, “little black squirrel”—whispered close to his ear. Adzriel had called him that first, and then only the ones who loved him—his friends, Kheeta, his sisters…

Another, too.

Haba, come back to us.

Haba, wake up.

Wake…

“Are you awake at last? Open your eyes and show me.” A woman’s voice, speaking in Aurënfaie.

Seregil let out a soft groan as someone lightly slapped his cheek. “Mydri, don’t. Sick.”

“Wake up, now. You must drink something.”

Consciousness returned slowly. At first he was aware only of a tremendous heaviness, then that scent, and of how hard it was to open his eyes. Something cool and moist passed across his eyelids, then his brow and cheeks. Someone was washing his face.

“Adzriel?” It came out a faint, cracked whisper. His mouth was so dry, and his tongue felt thick. “Where—?”

He didn’t recall reaching Bôkthersa. Something had happened…

“Open your eyes, young son.”

Young son? It was said in the formal style, rather than familial. His gummy lids parted at last and he found himself in a curtained bed in a dimly lit room. A candle burned somewhere beyond the bed curtains and someone sat beside the bed, a dark shape, with no visible face. A scrap of memory stirred—a dark, faceless shape lurching at him, a horrid, rotting stench…

A dra’gorgos!

But there was nothing but the scent of wax here, and the faintest whiff of Adzriel’s perfume still lingering in the air. Too weak to reach out or even turn his head, he blinked up at the woman, needing to hear a friendly voice.

“Ah, that’s better.” A woman, certainly, but not any of his sisters.

“Where—?” he asked, his voice a raw whisper.

“Hush, now, and stay still. You’ve been terribly ill.” As she leaned forward and brought a horn spoon to his lips, his saw that she was very old. A long white braid hung over one shoulder, and what he could see of her face above an embroidered veil was lined with age.

Cool sweet water trickled over his parched tongue and he swallowed eagerly, though it hurt like fire. He opened his mouth for more.

The faded blue eyes above the veil crinkled at the corners, revealing her hidden smile. “There now, a little more. Slowly though. We didn’t think you’d live, young son.”

“Who didn’t?” he rasped between sips.

She just shook her head a bit as she gave him more water.

“My sister,” he tried again, thinking she might be a bit deaf. “I thought—”

“Adzriel, is it? You called on her more than once. That’s your sister?”

“Is she here?” He hadn’t dreamed her scent. He could still smell it.

“No, and be thankful for that,” she replied, shaking her head.

“What? Please, tell me where I am,” Seregil begged.

“In the house of our master, of course.” Age-knotted fingers stole to a silvery circlet at her withered throat. Then Seregil noticed the faded round brand on her forearm.

“You’re a slave?”

“Of course. As are you.” She reached out and tapped something around his neck.

“What is that?” he demanded, though he already had a pretty good idea.

“Your collar, young son. You’re a slave now, no different than the rest of us. Seeing the size of that dragon mark on your hand, I’m surprised you ended up here. Maybe the luck of it ran out, eh?” She rose slowly and stepped away from the bed. “Rest now. I’ll bring you something to eat in a little while.”

“No, wait. Please!” He heard the soft sound of a door closing.

Frustrated and confused, he stared helplessly up at the dark canopy over the bed. He had to gather his wits, and soon!

But it was so hard. He felt sluggish, drugged. The struggle to think made him short of breath, as if he were climbing a mountain rather than lying flat on his back.

He’d been deathly ill, she’d said, and he certainly felt like it. His body hurt all over, and there were spots of a stronger, throbbing pain on the underside of his right forearm, and on the back of his left calf where it rested against the sheets.

Sheets? His wandering mind veered of its own volition. He flexed the fingers of one hand and felt smooth linen and the give of a soft mattress. What slave was given this sort of bed? Had the veiled woman been lying? Had he misunderstood?

But no, he remembered that much from the ship—rough, grasping hands, then pain and the smell of his own flesh being seared, cutting through the fog of illness.

“Fucking hell! Fucking, rotting balls of hell!” he whispered helplessly.

He was tucked in tightly under heavy quilts. It took all the strength he could muster to slowly work his right arm free. There, black against the pale underside of his forearm, was a small, scabbed brand in the shape of the letter S. He reached up and touched the metal collar around his neck. It was about a finger’s width in thickness, the metal rounded and very smooth.

“Aura Illustri!” He let his arm fall and closed his eyes, fighting down a rush of nausea as more fragmented memories seeped back.

The ambush. The smell. The shock of seeing the hideous black dra’gorgos bearing down on him. How could such an abomination appear on Aurënfaie soil? It could only mean that one of their attackers had been a necromancer; no one else could summon the unclean things.

And screaming. He was certain he remembered someone screaming.

“Alec!” Real panic set in then, and he managed to raise his head enough to see that there was no one else in the bed, and no sight of anyone else in what he could see of the room.

He’d called out for his sister, but not his talimenios? Panting, sick, and overwhelmed with guilt, he fell back against the pillow as tears welled in the corners of his eyes.

Screaming. Who had been screaming? Was it Alec? Was he dead, like all the others?

No! he told himself fiercely. No, I’d know. I’d remember that!

Yet try as he might, he couldn’t be certain, any more than he could summon the memory of what had followed.

The slaver’s mark was all he had to go on, and that was the worst possible news, for there were only two places he could be right now: in Plenimar, or in Zengat.

And yet for slavers to venture so far inland on Aurënen soil was unheard of in that part of the country. And what would they be doing with a necromancer?

He tried again to move, but the last of his strength had deserted him. As consciousness fled, however, a sudden realization followed him down into the darkness.

“Betrayed!” he mumbled to the empty room. “Phoria, I’ll see you dead!”